Mailbox Monday

This meme was started by Marcia at The Printed Page and Kristi at The Story Siren. In August, Chick Loves Lit is hosting Mailbox Monday in place of Marcia.



Last week I received four books.

The first is Pirate Devlin by Mark Keating. From Hachette's website the description reads:

An injured French officer struggles along a desolate stretch of West African coastline, desperate to hold on to his secret. Alas for him, his tale is soon ended, and violently, but a young pirate recruit, Patrick Devlin, who happens to speak fluent French, comes away from their encounter with a new pair of boots and a treasure map. From there the adventures of the pirate Devlin, his shipmates, and those who wish them dead move forward without restraint, through broadside barrages and subterfuge and brutal encounters on land and at sea, where nothing is as it appears to be at first glance.

I love this kind of pirate adventure story and I am so looking forward to reading this.


The second book is Bill Bryson's At Home. Subtitled 'A Short History of Private Life', the book's description from the Random House website reads:

“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig­ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

I read the first page and liked it already. No doubt about it, Bill Bryson has a way with words.



Sent to me by Penguin, the third book is Good Enough to Eat by Stacey Ballis. I like the cover of this one. The description from Penguin's website:

The last thing Melanie expected to lose when she went on a diet was her husband.

Former lawyer Melanie Hoffman lost half her body weight and opened a gourmet take-out café specializing in healthy and delicious food. Then her husband left her-for a woman twice her size. Immediately afterwards, she's blindsided by a financial crisis. Melanie reaches out to a quirky roommate with a ton of baggage and becomes involved in a budding romance with a local documentary filmmaker.

In this warm and often laugh-out-loud novel, Melanie discovers that she still has a lot to learn about her friends, her relationships with men, and herself-and that her weight loss was just the beginning of an amazing journey that will transform her life from the inside out.

This book just seems the perfect autumn read to me.


The last book One Flight Up by Susan Fales-Hill was a win from the Atria galley grab. From Simon and Shuster's website:

What happens after happily-ever-after fades? Can the answer be found one flight up?

India, Abby, Esme, and Monique have all been friends since their days at Manhattan's Sibley School for Girls. From the outside, these four women—all grown up now—seem to be living ideal lives, yet each finds herself suddenly craving more.

India Chumley is a whip-smart divorce lawyer who routinely declines the marriage proposals of her charming French boyfriend, Julien. She's taking the first plunge by moving in with him, but she's keeping her own apartment—and keeping it a secret from him.

Abby Rosenfeld Adams is an irrepressibly upbeat gallery owner who married her WASP college sweet heart, a passionate but tormented sculptor. When she suspects he is cheating on her, she realizes that perhaps there's more to life than reassuring her husband of his artistic brilliance.

Esme Sarmiento Talbot is a Colombian Scarlett O'Hara, bored with her proper Connecticut life and her tame, all-American husband. In order to satisfy her sensuality, she escapes to Manhattan and distracts herself with casual encounters.

A card-carrying member of Harlem's thriving buppie-ocracy and a successful gynecologist, Monique Dawkins-Dubois is married to a powerful but dull financier who barely notices her anymore. When an attractive coworker beckons, Monique can't help but be flattered.

The most straitlaced of them all, India is dismayed by her friends' illicit activities. That is, until her ex-fiancÉ, the love of her life and the destroyer of her heart, reappears in New York— and she finds herself caught between the dependable man she thought was her future and the man she never quite let go of.

Dazzling and sexy, One Flight Up is an irresistible comedic romp through the boardrooms, bedrooms, and ballrooms of Manhattan and Paris.

This one promises to be an entertaining read!